We’ve grown up a little since then. I hope.
As Enzo and his friend bring the sofa into our beautiful new house, I raise my eyes again to look at the house across the way. Number 13 Locust Street. There’s still someone staring at me from the window. The house is dark inside, so I can’t see much, but that silhouette is still at the window.
Somebody is watching us.
But there’s nothing ominous about that. The people in that house are our new neighbors, and I’m sure they are curious about who we are. Whenever I used to see a moving truck outside our building, I always watched through the window to see who was moving in, and Enzo would laugh and tell me to stop watching and go introduce myself.
That’s the difference between him and me.
Well, it’s not theonlydifference.
In an effort to change my ways and be more friendly like my husband, I lift a hand to wave at the silhouette. May as well meet my new neighbor at 13 Locust.
Except the person at the window doesn’t wave back. Instead, the shutters suddenly snap closed and the silhouette disappears.
Welcome to the neighborhood.
TWO
Enzo is carrying the last of the boxes into the house while I’m standing out on our sparse lawn, avoiding unpacking while fantasizing about how the lawn will look after my husband rejuvenates it. Enzo is a wizard when it comes to lawns—that’s sort of how we first met. This one almost looks like a lost cause with its brown patches and crumbly soil, but I know that a year from now, we will have the nicest lawn in the cul-de-sac.
I am lost in my fantasies when the door of the house directly next to ours—12 Locust Street—swings open. A woman with a butterscotch-colored layered bob emerges from the house wearing a fitted white blouse and red skirt with spiky high heels that look like they could be used to gouge out somebody’s eye. (Why does my mind always go there?)
Unlike the neighbor across the way, she seems friendly. She raises her hand in an enthusiastic greeting and crosses the short path of cobbled pavement separating our houses.
“Hello!” she gushes. “It issogood to finally meet our new neighbors! I’m Suzette Lowell.”
As I reach out and take her manicured hand in mine, I’m rewarded with an impressively painful handshake for a woman. “Millie Accardi,” I say.
“Lovelyto meet you, Millie,” she says. “You’re going to absolutely adore living here.”
“I already do,” I say honestly. “This house is amazing.”
“Oh, it really is.” Suzette bobs her head. “It was lying empty for a while because, you know, such a small house is a hard sell. But I just knew the right family would come along.”
Small? Is sheinsultingour beloved house? “Well, I love it.”
“Oh yes. It’s so cozy, isn’t it? And…” Her gaze rakes over our front steps, which have slightly crumbled, although Enzo swears he’ll fix them. It’s one of a long list of repairs we’ll need to make. “Rustic.Sorustic.”
Okay, she’s definitely insulting the house.
But I don’t care. I still love the house. It doesn’t matter to me what some snooty neighbor thinks.
“So do you work, Millie?” Suzette asks, her blue-green eyes zeroing in on my face.
“I’m a social worker,” I say with a touch of pride. Even though I have been doing it for many years now, I still feel proud of my career. Yes, it can be exhausting, soul wrenching, and the pay is nothing to get excited about. But I still love it. “How about you?”
“I’m a real estate agent,” she says with an equal amount of pride. Ah, that explains the way she was insulting our house in real estate speak. “The market is jumping right now.”
Well, that’s true. It occurs to me now that Suzette was not involved in the sale of this house. If she’s a real estate agent, how come her neighbors didn’t want her to sell their house?
Enzo emerges from the truck, carrying more boxes, his T-shirt still clinging to his chest and his black hair damp. I remember filling one of those boxes with books and being worried that I had made it too heavy. And now he’s carrying not only that box, but he’s put another one on top of it. My back aches just watching him.
Suzette is watching him too. She follows his progress from the moving truck to our front door, a smile spreading across her lips. “Your moving guy isreallyhot,” she comments.
“Actually,” I say, “that’s my husband.”
Her jaw drops open. Looks like she thinks more of him than she does of the house. “Seriously?”
